1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to diverters for dispersing cooking media in wash systems of cooking apparatus, and cooking chambers and cooking apparatus including such diverters.
2. Description of Related Art
When preparing food in fryer apparatus that use cooking media, including an open fryer and a pressure fryer, the quality of the cooking medium, e.g., an oil, a liquid shortening, a meltable-solid shortening, and a semi-solid shortening, may impact the quality of the food products, e.g., poultry, fish, and potato products, that are cooked. Known fryer apparatus may include one or more cooking chambers, e.g., fryer pots or vats, which may be filled with a cooking medium.
As the cooking medium is used to cook food, particles of food may contaminate the cooking medium. The flavor characteristics of each of these food particles may become infused in the cooking medium. This infusion may affect food quality adversely. Moreover, upon heating the cooking medium, the cooking medium may undergo chemical reactions, e.g., hydrolysis, oxidation, or polymerization, or combinations thereof. These chemical reactions may result in compounds, such as free fatty acids, hydroperoxides, or polymerized triglycerides, or combinations thereof. In addition, such reactions may reduce the viscosity of the cooking medium, which also may adversely affect cooking performance. In some instances, such changes to the cooking medium do not become apparent until significant change has occurred.
These chemical reactions and flavor infusions may shorten the useful life of the cooking medium, and may result in more frequent replacement of cooking medium. Moreover, as operators of fryer apparatus transition to using specialized cooking media, i.e., zero trans fat cooking media, replacement of an entire batch of cooking medium may be expensive and time consuming. Thus, known fryer apparatus include wash systems that use filtering mechanisms to remove particles, such as foreign objects, clumps, cracklings, and crumbs from the cooking medium, in order to extend the useful life of the cooking medium. Nevertheless, in known fryer apparatus, these undesirable foreign particles, e.g., crumbs, clumps of cooking debris, or cracklings, or combinations thereof, may remain in the system and accumulate at the bottom and sides of the cooking chamber.